In two recent 5-4 rulings, the U.S. Supreme Court declared that “three strikes” laws, which allow repeat offenders who commit even a minor crime such as stealing videotapes to be sentenced to 25 years to life in prison, are constitutional. These laws, the court said, do not violate the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition against “cruel and unusual punishment.”

However, the court’s approval of these laws does not necessarily mean that it makes sense to have them. In fact, the laws do little or nothing to reduce crime and create more problems than they solve. A large body of social science evidence, much of it from California – the state with by far the most three-strikes prosecutions – supports this conclusion.

First, most criminals do not give much thought to being arrested and punished or else do not think they will be caught. Either circumstance means they will not and cannot be deterred by three-strikes penalties. Then, too, many repeat offenders are already behind bars. Although their chances of arrest for any one crime are small, offenders who commit many crimes – the very ones targeted by three-strikes legislation – are quite likely eventually to be arrested and imprisoned for long terms. Perhaps for these reasons, there is little or no evidence that the new three-strikes laws in California have lowered crime: Several states without these laws had larger crime reductions in the 1990s than did California.

Second, three-strikes laws have worsened prison overcrowding in California as more than 50,000 offenders have been sentenced to the state’s prisons under these laws since the mid-1990s. This number includes about 7,000 sentenced 25 years to life for their third offense and more than 43,000 who had their sentence doubled for their second offense. This increased imprisonment has cost California hundreds of millions of dollars. It has also forced the state to release other inmates to make room for the three-strikes offenders. Some of these inmates are much more dangerous than the three-strikes offenders who displace them.

Third, many three-strikes offenders will remain behind bars long after most would have stopped committing crime anyway because they will be too old to do so. Crime is a young person’s behavior: It generally peaks in the late teens and early 20s and declines steadily after those years. Thus, most three-strikes offenders are being sentenced to lengthy terms that will keep them in prison far past their crime-prone years.

The Sentencing Project, a national nonprofit policy organization, estimates that in 25 years there should be at least 25,000 three-strikes inmates in California’s prisons who will be older than 40 and serving 25 years to life. Because they will be much older than their crime-prone years, any crime-reduction effect of their imprisonment will be relatively small, and at the annual cost of almost $1 billion in today’s dollars. Moreover, as these offenders age in prison, their health problems multiply, and so does the cost of caring for them.

Fourth, many three-strikes defendants have demanded jury trials rather than plead guilty in an effort to avoid the long prison term that would result from another conviction. These jury trials have created serious backlogs in several California courtrooms.

Finally, more than half of California’s three-strikes offenders are being imprisoned for nonviolent drug and property offenses, not for violent crime. Almost 350 offenders have received sentences of 25 years to life for petty thefts of things like pizza, golf clubs or videotapes. One two-time burglar received a term of 25 years to life for his third offense when he stole a pair of sneakers.

Three-strikes legislation began at a time of rising crime rates in the United States and in California was particularly motivated by the brutal murders of two young girls. However well-intended, though, three-strikes laws have not accomplished their goals and for many reasons have done much more harm than good. The Supreme Court may think that states should be free to send offenders to prison for 25 years to life for stealing a pizza or a few videotapes, but that does not mean that it makes sense to do so. In fact, the public interest, and above all the public’s safety, would be best served if three-strikes laws were eliminated and the hundreds of millions of dollars they have cost California and other states instead spent on effective crime prevention strategies.

Steven E. Barkan is professor and chair of the Department of Sociology at the University of Maine. He is a co-author (with George Bryjak of the University of San Diego) of “Fundamentals of Criminal Justice,” to be published by Allyn and Bacon.